McCain hospitalized due to effects of his cancer treatment.
It doesn't appear serious at the moment, and Cornyn is saying he expects McCain back soon, but apparently McCain missed some votes during the week and this is an extremely aggressive cancer, so it's difficult to say how hard it will hit at a given time, or when it will start take a greater toll on his health.
Despite my multitude of disagreements with the man, as a politics watcher for 20+ years, it's still a little sad to see him in a bad way. He's been one of the few constants along the way. Plus I hate cancer in general, as it has cut a swath through my family and friends. Give it hell, senator.

The problem with the National ID card is that you're going to have to prove who people are before they can get one. And the people currently locked out of getting IDs like a driver's license will likely face the same problem with a National ID card. Granted the National ID card and a national ID number that is actually designed to be one instead of makeshift such number as social security numbers i would be a good idea, but it's kind of a different issue, unless you're giving them out for free.
Most of my suggestions have been brought up in some of the last couple of posts: automatic registration once someone reaches the age of 18, make it a holiday and strictly enforce that any business or places of employment that must stay open also must give a generous amount of time to allow people to vote. Add in a requirement for non-partisan bodies to handle drawing up districts and making it illegal to gerrymander for partisan purposes, and a good portion of the problems with access to the polls and fair representation get sorted out. (I'd love to sharply limit campaign donations again, although I'm not sure what would be the right way to do so. Public bankrolling of any candidate that gets a certain amount of the vote/signatures, perhaps?)
On another issue: Rod Rosenstein, the person in the Trump administration with the actual authority to fire Mueller, tells right wingers that there is no cause to do so and to STFU.

I think Bannon has made a typical ideologue's mistake, and assumed that most people view and prioritize things exactly the way he does deep down, and being surrounded by his fanboys and radicalized converts has reinforced that impression. This has led him to assume he has much greater reach and influence than he does, and now that perception is running headfirst into reality.
Reevaluating his perceptions would call into question the causes he has dedicated himself to and whether they can be achieved, so I doubt he does it, and probably goes ahead (at least partly) with his primary all Republicans and try to have Breitbart displace Fox News as the main news source/propaganda arm of the right wing.
As was said before, may he have just as much luck in his endeavors as he did in Alabama.

As has been mentioned, this is already in the works. Mike Cernovich of Pizzagate fame, (who's also a MRA who says things like "You're not a true player unless you have at least a rape allegation or two", "Date rape doesn't exist because it's impossible to rape a woman without using force", and "Today we have a moment of silence for Trayvon Martin's rape victims. Kidding! Because he got shot before he could rape anyone") tried to get a liberal contributor from MSNBC fired for a tweet that skewered Roman Polanski supporters, and as mentioned there was a ginned up complaint against Chuck Schumer, where the person doing the accusing almost immediately recanted. Not to mention Project Veritas' attempt to sucker the Washington Post.
The weaponization is already there. Hopefully it gets caught every time and results in the unscrupulous GOP and alt-Nazi scumbags being exposed for what they really are without harming the millions of people who desperately need MeToo and the efforts to remove predators from positions of power.
Sometimes it's hard not to mix up Peter King and Steve King, who is as much of a cuckoo as you can find.

It's extremely sad how accurate that is. About a week ago there were a number of articles about a bunch of female alt-right social media and youtube personalities that were shocked that a bunch of alt-righters were literally trying to troll them off the internet and harass them for not living up to the "traditional" women's roles that they espouse. Those roles being getting married as a teenager, having at least 5 kids by their early 20s, and refusing to have any role outside the household in favor of supporting men to do it for them instead.
Every now and then you'd come across alt-Nazi stooges in the comments and you'd get nuggets from them straight out of Gilead. For example:
And:
Plus images like this screencap from 4chan. (Note, thot = that hoe over there, poster uses it so much it's hard to tell what they're saying without knowing that. Tradthot = traditional thot, obviously with the poster in question put quotation marks around traditional.)

And any action by the government that he disagrees with is tyranny, but installing and backing foreign dictators all around the world was also fine with him. Standard "conservative libertarian" hypocrisy. "My rights/the things I believe are sacred, but someone else's rights and beliefs being trampled on and destroyed just make me shrug as long as it doesn't effect me or people like me."

Yeah, it's amazing how the party that fellates the constitution and the Founders of the country continually argue against everything they stood for and created.
Modern "conservatives" advocate making the US a "Christian nation" and people of other religions shouldn't be allowed to hold office, that the press is the enemy of the people and should have their ability to report the news curtailed, that people protesting the government should be charged as racketeers and have their assets seized by the government, etc.
All of this should be offensive. But conservatives only cry foul over the First Amendment when someone tries to censure a literal Nazi advocating genocide from speaking. Says a lot about Republican leadership and their priorities right now.
As for Sky, as far as FNR is concerned, it comes from Europe so of course it's liberal. What, do you expect him to actually learn about different people and places instead of falling back on easy stereotypes?

As tempting as that sometimes is for a leftist, it would be just as wrong as the fundamentalists in the evangelical party who want to deny basic rights to the LGBTQ community, people of color, other faiths, and non-believers.
I happen to believe it would certainly lead to a far better outcome, but it would still be just as wrong.